Media Comforts and International Student Mobility: Managing Hopes, Host and Home

ABSTRACT

This paper underlines the importance of emotional and physical anchoring within international student experiences of dislocation, migration and place, noting the complex role of various media in situating students as at ‘home’ and/or ‘here’. Growth in the transnational mobility of international students is transforming infrastructures across ‘host countries’ globally. Yet, in these significant transformations, we are yet to fully understand how international students negotiate a sense of place and ontological security (Giddens 1991). Based on a qualitative study involving over 270 students at a large public university in Australia, this paper examines the everyday practices and negotiation of ‘feeling rules’ (Hochschild 1983) of mainly Chinese international students around the rhythms and connections of digital and legacy media. Our findings suggest international students navigate a central structural tension: seeking out affective security and insulation from the risks of mobility, while continually being encouraged to push beyond their comfort zone.

KEYWORDS:

• International students
• mobility
• screen media
• social media
• migration
• comfort zone
• Australia

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Gumpert and Drucker’s model investigates an increased use of digital media systems by city dwellers, businesses and urban administrators while offering a normative criteria for what constitutes a vibrant, creative and equitable city.

2 Throughout this analysis, substitute names have been used to de-identify student responses, with gender indicated as male (M) and female (F). Substitute names are of Chinese origin reflecting the fact that 83 per cent of respondents in our sample were from China. All respondent quotes drawn on in this article are from Chinese students.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tessa Dwyer

Tessa Dwyer is a lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University whose work focuses on language difference, accented voice and translation on screen.

Akane Kanai

Akane Kanai is a lecturer in the School of Media, Film and Journalism at Monash University. Her work focuses on gender, race, and the politics of affect in digital culture.

Jasmin Pfefferkorn

Jasmin Pfefferkorn is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Jiali Fan

Jiali Fan is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.

Alexander Lambert

Alexander Lambert is a lecturer at the National University of Singapore. He specialises in the study of alternative media and political change.